A youth house on the hillside of the small town of Champion near Namur was the place to be for the eleventh Painting Crusade. For the first time the urban scenery of downtown Brussels was traded for a more rural location at the forefront of the Belgian Ardennes.

Last year's edition was fantastic, the best so far (read my report here). When I heard the location was about to change my expectations were that it was to grow even further. But on the contrary, the youth house was much more cosy. The entire event was held in one big room, with the usual big painting table, a couple of second-hand tables, an "indie shop", a bar, and then in the back the painting competition, together with some display cabinets with work from this year's jury.

This year the jury consisted out of last year's overall winner Benoit Menard, sculptor Patrick Masson, and Denmark's number one painter: Jakob Rune Nielsen. Pretty big names if you ask me!

Here they are in the process of judging the Masters category:

Some of Patrick's sculpts on display:

What's so about Painting Crusade is that every year I get to see several legendary figures, like the Centaur by Jakob Rune Nielsen:

Other figures were on display as well:

And finally Benoit's amazing work.

I arrived just in time for Patrick's sculpting demo, which was held in a separate room. I'm not really into sculpting, but it was very interesting to see a pro at work. Patrick is also very good at explaining what he doest. Kudos to the Painting Crusade team for the camera and beamer setup.

After that I went back to the painting competition to check out the figures. Overall there were a lot less entires than last year, but the masters category was again filled with top-notch paintjobs.

Like every year there was a special edition category, with entries containing last year's event-only figure. I was very happy winning gold in this category with my project I finished the night before the competition. The hard work paid off :) Apart from that I also won bronze in the confirmed category with my Brood Master.

The other figure that won gold in the category.

It was really great to see those figures, which really are a blank canvas to unleash your inspiration upon.

Some pictures from the masters category.

A very cool turtle by this year's overall winner: Maxime Corbeil.

Another legendary piece: War for Macragge by Julien Casses.

Remember you can see much more pictures in the Painting Crusade XI gallery. Finally here's a short "mood-video" I compiled from a bunch of clips shot during the day.

I went home with some mixed feelings after this Painting Crusade. As usual it was very fun, the overall level of the pieces on display was insanely high, but I was a bit surprised by the smaller size of this year's event. This all has to do with last year's edition I suppose, which was so awesomely good that it's very hard to do better. Personally I don't think this will be the start of a downfall for Painting Crusade, but rather a new start. All in all the organization has done a terrific job once again. Several big names in the painting scene still visit this event, proving this isn't your regular painting competition organized by a small painting store or club.

Just got home from Painting Crusade 2014 with two trophies! Bronze for my Brood Master and gold for my PC-IX figure which I finished yesterday evening and which was entered in the special edition category. You can see a quick smartphone snap of the figure below, expect good pictures soon, as well as a full report on Painting Crusade later this week.